Career Development : Calendar

AHCJ San Francisco chapter: Mental health matters

10/17/13     San Francisco, CA

Are you a health reporter who regularly writes about mental health? Or maybe you’re looking to add this important area to your beat? Join us for a workshop and perspectives from two veteran health journalists.

Date: Thursday, Oct 17, 2013

Time: 6-8 p.m. (light refreshments and networking 6-6:30 p.m.; program begins at 6:30 p.m.)

Location: San Francisco Chronicle - North Beach conference room (901 Mission St., San Francisco)
Bring a photo ID and check in at reception desk. The Chronicle is near BART, and parking garages are nearby. 

***Please RSVP (BayAreaAHCJ@gmail.com). 

This event is free.

Background:

Despite the impression left by many news headlines, most people with a mental illness don’t commit crimes. But because mental health issues are largely underreported except when violence is involved, readers are left with an incomplete picture of just how many people deal with such health problems or that those problems are treatable. Did you know that 25% of American adults have a mental health disorder in any given year?

This workshop explores stigmas, stereotypes, and facts about mental health, and covers sources, precision, relevance, language, cultural considerations and many other issues that can help reporters and editors tell more complete stories.

There’s never been a more pressing need for robust reporting about mental health. This workshop can provide you with some tools for telling that story accurately.

Following the workshop, a health journalist with experience reporting on mental health will share some of her insights. Q&A will close the evening.

Speakers:

Melissa McCoy will lead the workshop. She is a media consultant to the TEAM Up project and former deputy managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. She was an ethics fellow at the Poynter Institute and has served as an editing and ethics instructor at the Maynard Institute. TEAM Up (tools for entertainment and media) is a project of the nonprofit Entertainment Industries Council designed to share information about mental health with journalists. 

Katherine Kam is a San Francisco Bay Area journalist who specializes in health reporting. In 2012, she received a Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship, which helped fund her three-part series on depression and suicide in Asian-American high school and college students.

Please join us for this important and compelling event.